What Is an Inner Cosmos?

I have been thinking about this question for a long time: the cosmos, the inner world, and whether the universe is only something outside of us.

Can an inner cosmos expand outward?
Can something private, quiet and invisible become visible through art?

The word cosmos often makes us think of stars, planets and distant galaxies. Something far away, something outside of us.
But the word comes from the Greek kosmos, which can also mean order, world, harmony or a meaningful whole.

For me, the cosmos is not only outside. It is also inside.

Yesterday I found myself thinking about this again, while preparing an exhibition application under the title Sisäinen kosmos — Inner Cosmos. The name felt right because it describes the world I keep returning to in my paintings: a place where dreams, memory, nature, symbols and space meet.

An inner cosmos is the quiet universe each of us carries within: memories, dreams, colours, fears, hopes, hidden stories and moments of wonder. It is not always logical. It does not need to be explained in a straight line. Sometimes it appears as a colour, an animal, a spiral, a planet, a soft light or a feeling of peace.

My own inner cosmos is full of colour, silence and gentle movement. It is a place where deer can become stars, where planets feel emotional, and where symbols appear before I fully understand them. I often paint intuitively, without a fixed plan, allowing the image to reveal itself layer by layer.

In this unfinished painting, The Deer Constellation (Peuratähtikuvio), two deer look upward while other deer form a constellation in the sky, inspired by the shape of the Big Dipper — Otava in Finnish.
The painting explores the connection between earth and sky, the visible and invisible, the animal and the cosmic.

Maybe an inner cosmos is different for everyone.

For one person, it may be a quiet forest.
For another, a storm.
For someone else, a map of memories, a dream, a colour, a place of healing.

I like to think that art can open a small doorway into these inner worlds.
A painting does not have to give one answer. It can simply invite the viewer to pause, look, and find their own story inside it.

And maybe that is what happens when the inner cosmos becomes visible: it is no longer only inside.
It becomes something shared, something outside of us too — a small universe between the artist, the artwork and the viewer.